Peroxide Stains
by Angelus1
Summary: He's not William, he's Spike. Why can't he see that?


Title: Peroxide Stains  
  
Author: Angelus  
  
E-mail: angelus1317@hotmail.com (Please put "Peroxide Stains" on the subject line.)  
  
Subject: Buffy the Vampire Slayer  
  
Category: BSR  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Summary: He's not William, he's Spike. Why can't he see that?  
  
Spoilers: rescuing spike from the cave and ep after.  
  
Archive: Anywhere, just ask me first.  
  
Disclaimer: Yeah, right, sure I own 'em. In my dreams. Buffy, Dawn, Spike, Xander, Anya, Giles, Willow, and the little Slayer wanna-be's are the property of Joss Whedon, WGN, and Mutant Enemy Inc. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
Author's notes: Okay, I was *trying* to get this nifty graphic as a header for this story, but I never got the okay from the person who made it, and I'm both impatient and proud of this story, so I decided to post it anyway. If I ever do get the okay, then I'll just re-post it. In the meantime, please check it out - it's awesome:  
  
http://digital-rose.net/tomb/fanling/fanart/spuffy/peroxidestains.php  
  
Anyway:  
Indira and I have decided that in order not to come up with plots that we want to write every five minutes, we just have to stop thinking. This one came to me while watching a video in my English class (Harrison Bergeron - good movie. See it.), and unfortunately I'm not allergic to paper like she is, so I sat down during my 3rd period history class and started this, and was finished with it by the end of the day. Yay me! Oh, and I also wrote a really short piece called "Hope" that same day that I'm posting at the same time as I am this fic, so do me a favor and read that one, too, ok? Thanks. And now, onto the Spuffy goodness. BTW - someone please let me know what the name is of the Slayerette is that interrupts while Spike and Buffy are holding hands in the cemetery? I put Molly, but I don't think that's right, and the tape that I watch it off of isn't mine and stupid Oliver won't let me borrow it again for another day. So yeah, somebody just please clear that up for me, and if I got it wrong, I'll have to change it, because I'm a perfectionist.   
  
Dedication: To Em and her Skiba. I still hate you, by the way.  
  
~*~  
  
He's free. After all that they've gone through to get him out, here he finally is. Free. Wandering around the Summers home as if he expects the walls to reach out and grab him any second, he's that uncomfortable.  
  
Dawn is ecstatic to have him back. The Slayerettes are in awe of him. Willow, Xander, and Giles are understandably wary of him, but they trust her judgement. Anya is happy to finally have someone in the house that she can relate to. And Tucker...Tucker idolizes Spike, following him around the house undressing him with his eyes, to everyone's disturbance.  
  
And Buffy herself....she misses him. He's here, allright, he's just not...himself. Not the Spike that she secretly fell in love with. He avoids her, spending his day alone in the basement that they've set up for him with a cot and a pillow and a blanket. When he sees her, he refuses to meet her eyes. When she comes near him, he shifts nervously from side to side, then quickly out of the way if he thinks they're in any danger of even brushing up against one another.  
  
And he *looks* different. His tight black T-shirts, faded black jeans, and black leather combat boots have given way to pressed black slacks, black button-down dress shirts, and shiny black patent-leather flats. She doesn't think she's seen the duster in ages.  
  
She knows he's trying to be good, but...good doesn't exactly work on Spike. He's not William, but apparently he thinks that's what she wants.  
  
She doesn't. She wants Spike. All of him. The drinking, the smoking, the sarcasm, and the blatant sex appeal. *That's* Spike to her. The leather and the peroxide and the snarky comments and the long, lusty stares and the curl of his lip into his cocky grin and his marble-pale body and his piercing blue eyes and the passion and the possessiveness and the recklessness and the fierce loyalty and the smoldering arousal in his eyes and the way he turns her knees to jelly with one look and the fire that burns inside when he touches her and the way he loves her like no human could ever hope to.  
  
She misses that Spike. No, she misses Spike, period. William depresses her.  
  
The thing that annoys her the most, however, is his hair. The bleach has grown out and it's too long and he keeps it shellacked to his head with something shiny and greasy. That's William, or at least a variation on William. Spike has a wild jumble of platinum spikes and curls. It's his crowning glory; his trademark.  
  
Just as she's in the middle of this mental rant, he enters the room. They're in the kitchen, actually. Xander took Dawn and the Slayerettes on a little field trip to the cemetery for some extra training and a chance to blow off some steam, and Giles, Willow, and Anya are out scouring the town for information. This is the first time they've been alone together since........  
  
Since the cave. When she set him free. She shudders even now at the memory of his weak, trembling hand rising to caress her scarred cheek; to make sure that she was really there. Her heart had nearly broken at the sight of his bruised, bloody body, knife designs carved into his stomach and chest, left eye swollen shut, wrists chafed and burned from the ropes holding him. She'd cut him loose and he'd stare at her as if she were a mirage.  
  
And then they'd stumbled out of the cave, arm in arm, her fingers tingling against his bare skin, his hand heavy across her shoulders. And that was all the physical contact they'd had up until four or five weeks ago.  
  
That fight in the cemetery, in front of the Slayer trainees. She'd have loved to go at it with all she had , but he was holding back. She could tell. But before she could tell him to stop being a pansy-ass, she was on top of him and he was holding her hand and shooting her looks that nearly made her melt on the spot. And there she had sat, pleading to him with her eyes.  
  
But he had done nothing. He had simply pulled back his hand, flustered, when Molly had interrupted, and had let her stand.  
  
William again. Maybe she just knew Spike too well, but William couldn't cut it for her. Spike would have grabbed her hips, rocking her against his rock-hard erection, yanked her forward to crush her mouth to his, then rolled her over and taken her right there.   
  
So when he saunters into the kitchen without a word and heads for the refrigerator, she shoots daggers at him with her eyes. When will he wake up and see what's right in front of him? He drains a blood packet without even bothering to heat it first and tosses the empty plastic wrapper into the trash can, morphing back to human and wiping the excess blood from his upper lip, all before he bothers speaking to her.  
  
"Little wanna-be's running all over town?" he asks. He's leaned back against the kitchen sink, his arms folded across his chest, and even as he's talking to her he refuses to look directly at her.  
  
"Xander's with them," she informs him.   
  
"Ah. The Whelp. Now *there's* an accident just waiting to happen."  
  
"I didn't ask for your criticism." There's silence. It echoes - off the tile floor, the ceiling, the walls, drowning out the only other sound in the room - the humming of the running refrigerator.  
  
"I think you've done a good job, you know," he says finally. "Training them and... everything. Keeping things together, planning, staying strong... everything. Especially under the circumstances."  
  
And that's about all she can take.  
  
Storming across the kitchen, Buffy grabs Spike by the front of his shirt and starts walking so that he has no choice but to follow. A wary yet bemused smile crosses his face as she leads him upstairs. When she heads for the bathroom, however, he panics.  
  
"Buffy... luv... I think you should let go now."  
  
"No. Come," she demands. Anything else, literally, he'd be more than willing to do for her. But this? No. Not this. Anywhere but this place.  
  
She ignores him. Not that he should be surprised or anything - after all, when has she ever listened to him? He wants to protest again, but there's something about the way she's looking at him that makes him not so much afraid anymore.  
  
She drags him inside.  
  
The second he's in, his brain shuts down. He won't think, he won't remember, he promises himself. Then all of the sudden she's pushing him into the shower and turning it on.  
  
"What the... bloody hell, woman, what's wrong with you?!" he exclaims. He's ignored, however, again, as she reaches for a bottle of shampoo and begins lathering his hair. She punctuates each sharp jab of her fingers with a single syllable, until finally he relaxes, leaning into her touch.  
  
"You. Are. Not. William," she informs him. When the pomade is completely washed out, she shuts off the water and reaches for something else. Spike's eyes widen. He didn't see her bring the bottle of peroxide and the pair of scissors into the shower, but there they are. He decides to just let her do her thing - it's better than trying to argue with her, after all. They settle into a steady rhythm: breathe, snip; breathe, snip; breathe snip.  
  
"So what brought upon this?" he murmurs. He's practically purring now, his eyes closed, her touch able to soothe him even in this horrid place.  
  
"You're not William," she repeats, setting down the scissors and switching to the peroxide, dousing his head in it.  
  
"Careful, Slayer," he warns. "That stuff burns." She takes a seat on the ledge of the bathtub, her feet inside of it, facing the wall. Spike sits beside her, facing the opposite way, and they sit like that, silent and still, until the peroxide begins to sting his scalp a bit.   
  
"Slayer? Isn't it time to wash this stuff out?" he asks.  
  
"You've still got fifteen minutes left, you big baby," she reminds him. He pouts. She pouts back. He crosses his eyes. She sticks out her tongue.  
  
And then they're laughing. Really, truly laughing. When was the last time they'd laughed like this together; at all? she muses. She can't remember for the life of her.  
  
"I'm not, you know," he says, out of the blue, once the initial bout of the giggles has subsided a bit.  
  
"What?"  
  
"William. I'm not him - not anymore."  
  
"Then why do you try to be?"  
  
"I don't!" he protests.  
  
"Spike," she points out patiently. "Look at yourself. The clothes, the hair, the attitude?" As she speaks, she pulls him up to stand and turns on the water, helping him rinse the bleach out. "Don't be William," she continues. "Please. William is in the past now. Be Spike. Spike the vampire, Spike the bad-ass, Spike the smart-alec... and Spike that, despite everything against us, I fell in love with."  
  
When she looks up at him, his eyes are sapphire with lust. He sits back down, his leg spread wide in open invitation. So she hooks her own legs over his knees and she straddles him, her face even with his.  
  
He grabs her hips, rocking her against his rock-hard erection, yanks her forward to crush her mouth to his, then rolls her over and takes her right there.  
  
Sweaty and breathless, Buffy lays her forehead against that of the vampire beneath her. Her hands slide through his newly-shorn hair, ruffling it, and she pulls back to take a good look at him.  
  
His hair is white-blonde and standing on end and there's smoldering passion in his eyes and his lip is curled into a cocky grin and there are peroxide stains all down his formerly black shirt, but that doesn't matter.  
  
Because when she looks into his eyes, staring back at her she sees not William, but Spike. 


End file.
